Left Voice

Women's day

Pan y Rosas marched next to the women workers of the new "grassroots trade unionism" at Kraft

March 09, 2010

A united Mobilization at the Plaza de Mayo and a rally by Pan y Rosas at the Consulate of Chile in Buenos Aires

With more than 600 women comrades, Pan y Rosas participated in the united march for International Women’s Day and held a big rally together with the women delegates of the new "grassroots trade unionism."

With more than 600 women comrades, the Pan y Rosas group participated on this March 8 in the mobilization from Congress to the Plaza de Mayo, promoted by different women’s organizations, and social and leftist political organizations, on the occasion of International Women’s Day. On arriving at the Plaza, around a thousand women were present at the reading of a joint document that denounced Cristina FernÃ¡ndez and the bosses’ opposition, for continuing to prohibit the right to abortion and keeping precarious jobs and low wages; the document demanded the dismantling of the slave trade and prostitution networks, and an end to violence and spoke out in defense of the shop stewards’ committee at Kraft and the rest of the shop stewards’ committees and groups of militant delegates.

Then Pan y Rosas mobilized at the Consulate of Chile, where they held a big rally in which two delegates from the new shop stewards’ committee at Kraft Terrabusi, Pamela Bulacio y Lorena Gentile, Jennifer Wainberg from the Centro de Estudiantes de FilosofÃ­a y Letras (CEFyL) of the University of Buenos Aires, one of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, Elia Espen, and Andrea D’Atri, a founder of Pan y Rosas and a national leader of the Partido de los Trabajadores Socialistas (PTS), all spoke. Working women from the food industry, from INDEC, and from the telephone company, as well as women teachers and non-academic university workers, women metalworkers, health workers, women from other professions, and women directors of centers of secondary and university students, all spoke.

The speech by the women comrades from Kraft was strongly applauded. They emphasized the fight they fought against the multinational, the government, the cops and the bureaucracy, and the need to continue organizing for the rehiring of the workers who were fired and in defense of their group of delegates and the shop stewards’ committee; at the same time, they called on the women workers of the factory to set up the Women’s Commission in order to get organized in their workplace and in all the food factories.

To conclude, Andrea D’Atri stressed that "while the national government and the employers’ and priests’ opposition is denying us the right not to die from a back-alley abortion, the presence of hundreds of working women at this rally shows the depth of the change that is beginning to develop in our country: a new grassroots trade unionism is sweeping the workers’ movement, and it has women not only as leaders, but also as active partisans of the fight for our rights, as shown by the Women’s Commission promoted by the women workers at Kraft."

Beside these women, the Pan y Rosas group is raising its voice to say: The capitalists must pay for the crisis! No to paying the foreign debt! For the right to unrestricted abortion without cost! No more violence against women! US and UN troops, out of Haiti! No more repression against the Chilean people!